


Harmony in Suspension

by CG (NYCScribbler)



Category: Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 07:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NYCScribbler/pseuds/CG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Going Within Harcels had its consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harmony in Suspension

**Author's Note:**

> I'm easily distracted by the shiny, and this idea ambushed me while I was doing canon review of a canon I didn't even offer.

There was a new voice in the song.

Harcels felt the change with the dawn and savored this thing that he did not recognize. It was curious, and wild in its joy like one of Eyrn's chicks first learning the glory of flight. This new voice was strange, old and rich like the Teller of Tales, young as his sister's daughter. It carried a hint of weary knowledge, and Harcels could not understand why knowing something would be painful.

The voice was strong, bold, when he first heard it in that beautiful dawn, but it was more often a whisper, underharmony to the familiar voices of the stars and sun, the wind and the trees, the songs they sang together to birth the world. Every day the song was different, and every day he listened and was one with it. Sometimes he could hear the new voice, if he took the time to listen for it, but he was not often of a mind to try and find it, content to simply be within the music.

Once, high in the air with Eyrn, his heart beating fast with the sheer joy of flight with her, savoring the crisp cold wind in his face and the steady beat of the sun warm against his back, he had a thought so absurd that he almost fell from Eyrn's back laughing at it. For a brief moment, he heard the old-new, strange-familiar voice in one clear note like a bird's cry, and he wondered if it knew it was singing. But of course it knew- how could it not be aware of something so basic, so instinctive, so much a part of the world? To not know the song was to not know the breath in one's lungs, the beat of one's heart; to be blind, and deaf, and dumb, and wrapped in a blanket. It was to not know that one was alive.

Eyrn dove suddenly as a tailwind caught her by surprise, and Harcels clung to her, laughing, while she dove. Any thoughts of strange voices in the wind vanished with the exhilaration of Eyrn's speed and the breath driven out of his lungs. He let out a wordless, voiceless cry of glee and leaned down tight against Eyrn until he almost felt that he was part of her, sinking into her feathers and feeling the echo of her wings in his arms.

 

There were more new voices: the children of the People of the Wind, the children of other tribes Harcels had never seen, Eyrn's chicks and Finna's calves, baby birds in the trees and fawns in the woods, the hardly visible eggs of fish hatching in the lake and bear cubs blinking sleepily in the sunlight. One of the elders went to dwell among the stars, and his voice grew faint but rich with the knowledge of the stars and the sun and the moon. The harmony grew ever stronger, ever deeper, ever clearer, ever more... he did not have the word, but it did not bother him that he did not know the word.

 _Complete?_ he wondered, but he shook his head. The song could never be complete, for to be complete meant that nothing new could be added, and that would mean nothing being born: no more laughing babies with deep dimples and everything in the world in their eyes, no more of Finna's calves arcing out of the water in spinning leaps, no more of Eyrn's chicks testing their wings for the first time under her watchful eye, no more delicate fawns trembling in the woods as their mothers taught them how to hide, no more butterflies breaking open their cocoons to reveal their new beauty, no more young trees growing tall and slender from oaken acorns and the fluttering seeds of maples, no stars bursting into glorious new life so far away that Harcels could not conceive it.

 _Perfect?_ he then wondered, but again he shook his head. The song was the song. Trying to perfect it would be like trying to perfect the air or the sun. He was part of it, and it was part of him, and the notion of trying to judge the whole of it from within his place in it was like being an ant and trying to judge the hill he lived in. The song was always changing, always new and always old, always strange and always familiar, and at any moment what one might find perfect would be discordant to another. Who was he to judge the world?

 _Calm. Be, and be not afraid,_ the stars spoke to him in silver chimes, and he was calm, and not afraid.

The old-new-tired-joyous voice he had heard behind the song briefly burst out in exultation. _I understand!_ it seemed to sing, and the purity of the note brought tears to Harcels's eyes.

Then it was gone, a faint echo in the memory of the song, and Harcels wondered at it until Finna leaped from the water and swam towards the shore, eager for his company. He laughed away his thoughts and ran to join her in the lake until he had to help gather herbs with the Healer and learn their qualities.

 

"Healer, I fear I may be sick in the mind," Harcels said to his mentor, and though he was calm, he still feared.

The Healer looked at him with clear dark eyes that seemed to cut through him as they searched for the sickness. "It is rare for one so afflicted to know it. Tell me of what disquiets you, and I will see if it is within my power to heal," he said with warmth in his voice that did not yet set Harcels's heart at ease.

Harcels sat down next to the Healer's fire and pulled his knees close to his chest. "The world is so beautiful! Everything moves in harmony. The sky is clear, and the wind is crisp, and the water is clear, and the soil is rich. People are content. Everything is good and in balance."

The Healer nodded, settling himself down next to Harcels and looking into the flames. "All these things are true."

"But how do I know that this is special? If a thing is, then it is. It can be no other way. The air is the same as it has always been. The blue of the sky and the water is no different. The earth is familiar to me. I know they are the same, and yet I see so much more to them than I once did."

There was a long silence in the hut, which the Healer broke softly. "You are not ill. You are simply becoming a man. I had not thought it would come so soon, but all things come in their own time, not as we will them," he said, and there was something in his voice that Harcels had only ever heard from the oldest stars and the coldest winds, something that a memory called _regret_ , something he had never felt.

"Forgive me, but I do not understand. I have been through the ceremonies..."

The Healer shook his head. "The ceremonies show that you have the body of a man, and that you must do the things that men do. But this... this is a heavy burden that many men never experience. It does you no good, nor does it do you any evil, unless you let it. I had hoped you would not have to bear it, yet it does aid in the healing of wounds and the curing of illness to understand it. There are things I will have to teach you, and they will not be joyful."

"And is part of this burden that I now cherish these joyful times?" Harcels asked.

"Yes, and the ones that come hard-earned will be even sweeter." The Healer smiled, and it was the smile of one remembering a sweeter time. "And as you are a man twice over, and one who will need a partner in both joy and pain, speak to the Harmonizer. I have seen how his daughter looks at you when you swim with your friend, and she is a woman both clever and beautiful. She will be good for you, will young Zella."


End file.
